


you're crazy (and i'm out of my mind)

by inkin_brushes



Series: Immortals (Vamp AU) [2]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-27 06:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6274039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkin_brushes/pseuds/inkin_brushes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wonshik will always regret not being able to tell Hongbin he loved him more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Ravi/Hongbin backstory for vamp au! It's pretty intense, just...to warn you. I feel like my aim with this fic was to make people cry so if I do that just know that it warms the cockles of my cold little heart.

Wonshik banged his fist against his bathroom door, loudly enough that it should be heard even over the thunder of the water in the sink. “Hurry the fuck up!” he yelled, pounding rhythmically. “I need to shower still.”

“You should have done it earlier,” Hongbin trilled back through the door. The water seemed to get louder. 

“I was doing you earlier,” Wonshik yelled, and there was a thud as Hongbin threw something — Wonshik’s shampoo, it turned out later — at the door. “What are you even _doing_?”

“Shaving, what does it sound like?”

“You don’t need to _shave_ ,” Wonshik scoffed. “Do you even get facial hair?”

The water turned off. Hongbin finally stuck his head out of the door, his face perfectly bone dry and hairless. “I regret letting you do me,” he said sweetly. 

“No, you don’t,” Wonshik said. He grabbed Hongbin’s wrist and tugged him out of the door so he could wrap his free arm around his waist and hold him close. He kissed Hongbin’s closed mouth once softly. When he pulled away, Hongbin was rolling his eyes. 

“I know,” Wonshik said, resting his forehead against Hongbin’s. “I’m a sap.”

“Ah, but you’re my sap,” Hongbin said, with a smile. He untangled himself from Wonshik’s hold, stepping away to walk into the kitchen. There was something awkward about the way he walked, his spine suddenly tense, and Wonshik both smiled and sighed to see it. It surprised him, how much it took out of Hongbin to even say those things in jest. Hakyeon may joke around about how Wonshik was emotionally stunted but at least he could say ‘I love you’. 

His bathroom looked like a bomb had hit it, his towels slung over the floor and his various bottles of products all out of place. He bent down and scooped his shampoo off the floor where it lay at his feet. He looked mournfully at his shower. “It’s too late now,” he said sadly. “I’ll have to go on the hunt smelling like five day old garbage.” 

“You only smell like three day old garbage,” Hongbin called from the kitchen. He was rummaging around in there too, probably making a giant mess for no good reason just like he had in the bathroom. There had been nights where Wonshik had come home after a hunt and been convinced that he’d suffered a break-in, even despite all the wards on his house, simply because his stuff had been strewn everywhere. Then he’d gone into his bedroom and found Hongbin asleep on his bed, sprawled out and taking up all the sheets. It wasn’t as though Hongbin’s apartment was even slightly messy, either, so apparently he just saved it all up for when he came to Wonshik’s place.

“Hakyeon’s going to make fun of me,” Wonshik said. Hongbin was making coffee, pouring hot water over the instant powder in two mugs. He’d added milk to his own and sugar to Wonshik’s. He passed Wonshik’s mug to him.

“Hakyeon always makes fun of you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Wonshik sighed. “He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“What am I, chopped liver?”

Wonshik pulled him in close again, dodging the hot mug Hongbin was holding up to his face in order to nuzzle at his cheeks and mouth, pressing gentle kisses to his lips. “You’re much better than chopped liver.”

“You have such a way with words.” Hongbin drained his mug quickly, too used to quick cups of hot coffee by now for the burn of it to even register. “Come on, we do need to go though. I’m bait tonight and it always takes Hakyeon forever to get the eyeliner right.”

“ _You’re_ the bait?” Wonshik’s hand tightened around Hongbin’s waist, holding him against him even as Hongbin protested and tried to move off. “Since when?”

“Since Hakyeon dislocated his finger in that scuffle a couple of days ago.”

“It was his finger!” Wonshik cried.

“I don’t make the rules, do I, darling?” Hongbin drawled. He pecked Wonshik on the mouth. “How about this though, I’ll get all dolled up and after we’ve killed some vamps, I’ll let you bring me home and fuck me.”

Wonshik stared at him. He’d heard Hongbin say a lot of things in their time together, through their years of friendship and now, their relationship, of sorts, together, but there was still something so strange, so unusual about hearing things so crude come out of that pretty mouth.

“I love you,” he said, and meant every syllable of it.

“I know,” Hongbin said with a smile. 

——

Waiting was always the worst part. Wonshik tapped his foot on the cement, leaning against the wall of the club, hands stuffed in his pockets. Hongbin had disappeared inside of the club about half an hour earlier and hadn’t yet come out, Hakyeon disappearing after him to keep an eye out. Wonshik waited outside, trying to stay in the safety of the lights but enough out of the way so that the people tripping in and out of the club looked past him. It was working; nobody was paying him any attention, as far as he could tell.

Wonshik had never played the bait. He didn’t have the right look, according to HQ. He looked too much like he could defend himself, wasn’t an appealing target. He couldn’t say that he was too cut up about it. Playing the bait wasn’t particularly difficult or dangerous for a seasoned hunter, but getting dressed up for the clubs was an extra hassle he didn’t want to have to go through. It was eerie watching Hongbin transform into the bait, like Wonshik was staring at someone different. 

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out, peering at the screen. It was an old enough model that the backlight barely even worked anymore. It was a message from Hakyeon, telling him that Hongbin was about to leave. Wonshik looked up just in time to see Hongbin stagger out of the front doors of the club, stumbling and falling heavily against a lamppost in front of him.

He wasn’t drunk, although he stunk of alcohol as he stumbled past Wonshik, giving no indication that he saw him, never mind knew him. He’d been dressed tonight in skin tight jeans and a grey button up shirt, sleeves rolled up and a multitude of thick leather straps wrapped around his wrists to hide the owl eyes there. The shirt had been buttoned just high enough to cover the uppermost point of the anti-glamor triangle that rested near the top of Hongbin’s chest. The front of the shirt was stained, presumably by the alcohol that Hongbin had spilled on himself. Wonshik hoped it hadn’t been expensive; that would be a waste. 

He messed around on his phone just long enough that Hongbin, after stumbling into yet another lamppost, turned a corner and vanished into a dark alley, hunching over as if he was going to throw up. The hairs on the back of Wonshik’s neck stood on end, the wards in his tattoos coming alive, tingling up and down his body. 

They hadn’t been tracking a vamp tonight, not especially. It was more of a fishing trip than anything else, trying to see if they could draw one of the various vamps that lived in the area out of hiding. It worked a lot of the time. The majority of the vamps, Wonshik had found, let their bloodlust get the better of them, their desire to feed often overwhelming any self-preservation instinct. Or perhaps they simply misjudged their own strength, thought that they could take a hunter. If that was the case, they were nearly always wrong. 

Wonshik’s wards were screaming at him now, and he had to resist the urge to go flying around the corner to provide immediate back up. He trusted Hongbin, knew that he could do it. He was a good hunter, as good as Wonshik, even if it smarted a bit to admit it. At least with Hakyeon, Wonshik could put his better hunting skills down to the tattoos that he’d covered himself in, the blood he’d gotten from his magic user grandfather, but Hongbin had less tattoos that even Wonshik, just the three main ones and a few others for added protection (the sunburst for protection lay on Hongbin’s right shoulder, his left holding the start of an abstract tribal print which trailed down his left upper arm and which would sizzle if he was grabbed there). Hongbin was good, and he didn’t need Wonshik running in and potentially ruining things.

He waited. His body was tense, every muscle poised for him to spring into action if he needed to, waiting for any sort of signal that Hongbin was in trouble, that he needed him. There was nothing. He heard shuffling, then no sound at all for a couple of seconds. Then, as quickly as they’d started, his wards settled down, falling silent.

He pushed himself up off the wall, a small amount of confusion making him hesitate. No hunt ended that silently, no vamp went down soundlessly, and yet his wards had gone still. Hongbin must have killed it, surely. 

A second later, Hongbin ran around the corner of the alley, almost falling on him, not expecting Wonshik to just be standing in the middle of the sidewalk. “It ran off,” he said breathlessly, his stake still in his hand. 

“What?” Wonshik asked flatly. Vamps didn’t run off when they had their prey so close, alone and apparently undefended. “Did you pull the stake out too early?”

“No,” Hongbin snapped. “I’m not a fucking idiot, Wonshik. I pulled it out after it went, just in case. I was waiting for it to touch me, but it didn’t. I could see it in the corner of my eye reaching for me but then it, I don’t know, it looked like it got spooked by something and ran off.”

“It probably noticed the tattoos,” Wonshik sighed. “Great. Did you get anything we could use as a description?” 

“Male, middling height, dark hair.” Wonshik raised his eyebrow. “What?” Hongbin snapped. “It was dark.”

“You have an owl eye on your wrist,” Wonshik cried, grabbing said wrist and exposing the tattoo under the leather. 

Hongbin pulled his hand back, looking affronted. “That’s all I saw, sorry my fleeting glance isn’t good enough for you.”

“Oh, don’t be mad at me,” Wonshik sighed. “Look, it’ll be okay, we can find it, it’ll be off hunting someone else. Let me get Hakyeon.”

When Hakyeon answered his phone, it was hard to make him out over the obnoxiously loud music in the club. “What?” he screamed into Wonshik’s ear.

“We _lost it_ , get your fucking ass out of there so we can go hunt.” Wonshik hung up. Hongbin was chewing the inside of his mouth, pacing up and down the sidewalk. “Hey,” Wonshik said, reaching out and taking his arm, stilling him. “Calm down. We’re going to fix this.”

“I shouldn’t have let it get away, it was right _there_ —”

“It’s not your fault, Hongbin. Shit just happens. You know that. All we can do now is find the bastard and kill it before it hurts someone.”

“And _how_ are we going to do that? It’s _gone_ , Wonshik!” Hongbin pulled out of his hold, whirling around to resume his pacing. By the time Hakyeon ran up to them, Wonshik was surprised he hadn’t worn a hole in the concrete. 

Hakyeon greeted them with an angry, “You _lost_ it?”

“It ran away,” Wonshik amended. 

“What did you do?” Hakyeon asked, turning on Hongbin.

“I didn’t do anything!” Hongbin yelled. “It just ran off!” 

“Hey!” Wonshik stepped between them, putting a gentle hand on Hakyeon’s chest to get him to back off. The two of them were breathing heavily, angrily, although Wonshik could read Hongbin’s face well enough to know that most of his anger was merely guilt. “It’s not his fault, Hakyeon, back off. He did it by the book. We don’t have time to be fighting, we need to find it.”

Hakyeon opened his mouth and then snapped it shut, taking a few deep breaths through his nose. “You’re right,” he ground out eventually. “We need to find it. We need to split up and see if we can’t trace it somehow.”

“I didn’t see which way it went,” Hongbin said, apparently trying to head that question off at the pass. 

“That’s okay,” Wonshik said. “It won’t have gone far, not if this is its hunting ground. It was thirsty enough to attack you which means that it’ll be trying to find a new victim somewhere around here.” He pointed in the opposite direction of the club, past the alley. “I’ll go this way. Hakyeon, you try the other way. Hongbin, you—”

“The alley opens up behind the club,” Hongbin said. “I’ll go that way.”

“Okay.” Wonshik thought about saying something to him, just like he always did before Hongbin began to play the bait, like whenever Hongbin went on a hunt without him. Something thoughtful, tender, something that spoke of the volume of his desire for Hongbin to return safe to him. He never quite managed it. Saying that he loved Hongbin was easy, but these words stuck in his throat, too shameful for them both. 

Hongbin moved off first, barely even looking back at them. It was strange to see that kind of focus on Hongbin’s face, who was usually playful in the middle of the hunt, taking the fun where he could find it. His pride had been dented more than he’d let on, and Wonshik gave Hakyeon an irritated look. 

“It wasn’t his fault,” he said. “You didn’t have to yell at him.”

There was a pause. “I know,” Hakyeon sighed. “It’s just— you and him, and—”

“I’m not taking his side over you,” Wonshik told him. “If he’d screwed up, then I’d let him know, he could have endangered himself. But the vamp just ran off.”

Hakyeon pulled a face, upper lip curling, and Wonshik knew that he’d won. “You’re right. I’ll apologise to him. After we find this damn vamp.”

“Afterwards,” Wonshik agreed. “I’ll hold you to it.” He turned and jogged off past the entrance of the alley, now still, Hongbin gone into the darkness. Beyond the alley was a long street, stretching on further than the streetlights ran. He passed a couple more clubs, a number of people hanging around outside, huddling under the streetlights in clumps less for safety than for their own peace of mind. Eventually even the clubs stopped, too far into the outskirts for even the most daring of owners or party animals to risk it. Most of the buildings this way were empty, and falling apart, and he slowed as he passed broken doorway after broken doorway with no sign of any inhabitants. When he saw a flickering streetlight up ahead, he decided he’d had enough and beat a hasty retreat back to the original alley. 

Hakyeon was waiting for him outside the entrance. He pointed in the direction of where he’d been searching. “That way eventually gives way to a better, well lit area. I saw a couple of the sucker cops skulking around there too. No vamp is going to risk it. I didn’t see anything along the way, either.”

“There’s nothing back there,” Wonshik said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. “Street lights eventually run out, so of course there were no people around. Not exactly a great hunting ground. I guess that only leaves Hongbin.”

There was a short silence. Wonshik watched as Hakyeon’s eyes glanced at the alley that Hongbin had disappeared into and then back to Wonshik. “Do you think,” he said slowly, “he’ll need backup?”

“Probably not,” Wonshik said. _Yes_ , he wanted to say. “It’s just a single vamp, and he’s a good hunter.” _Let’s go now_.

“It’s just, he was a sitting duck of a target and it got spooked enough to ignore its own bloodlust to run off,” Hakyeon pointed out. “It must be strong, to be able to do that.”

“It’ll be fine,” Wonshik insisted. “Look, I know your concerns, but to be honest, I think that if we go charging in there, claiming to just be helping him out, he’ll just be pissed off that we didn’t think he could do the job. We need to wait for him to contact us”

Hakyeon pressed his lips together tightly but didn’t say anything. Wonshik began to pace back and forth in front of the entrance to the alley. He talked a good talk but inside, Hakyeon’s worries had been added to his own and were now gnawing a hole in his stomach, hard and difficult to ignore. He didn’t want to trample all over Hongbin’s ego, but at the same time he was somewhat concerned that Hongbin would try to take down the vamp without any backup. That was a dumb move, even for someone with Hongbin’s abilities. There were too many variables, too many things that could go wrong. 

Time passed, minutes ticking by on his watch. Eventually there were more people stumbling out of the club than stumbling in, a sure sign that even they were preparing to get home. Wonshik’s phone stayed silent. Eerily silent. He could see Hakyeon staring at him, but he avoided his eyes, trying to control his breathing. _It’s okay_ , he said. _It’s okay_.

“Let’s go look for him,” he said suddenly, and Hakyeon’s nod of agreement was pure relief.

They made their way up the alley that Hongbin had disappeared into in silence. Wonshik was almost scared to speak, like the silence was some sort of magic. The alley was still, deserted. His wards stayed quiet as they walked through it and came out at the other side onto a small stretch of road that seemed to mostly be the back ends of nightclubs and fast food joints. 

There weren’t many people around here. To the left that were a lot more lights, a lot more establishments to provide a little bit of safety. Wonshik could pick out a few drug addicts slumped in the empty doorways up the street, but when he looked to his right, he could see none, although the road was still adequately lit. He glanced at Hakyeon, who was staring to the right, chewing nervously on his bottom lip. 

“Which way do you think?” Wonshik asked. All of his instincts were screaming for him to just go to the left, but he knew that they were self-preservation instincts more than anything else.

“This way,” Hakyeon said, making a jerky motion with his hand to the right. He looked about as pleased to be saying it as Wonshik was to be hearing it, but he turned resolutely and headed down the road, footsteps echoing in the silence of the night. Wonshik sighed and followed him.

The street stretched on longer than he expected it to, and the lights held out all the way, even if there were fewer of them, spaced farther apart. There was no one around, not even a vamp. He didn’t know what they were looking for, not really, nothing beyond Hongbin, but something was drawing him in this direction, like he knew — something. There was something misty at the back of his mind, not fully formed. It was that which kept him walking, even though he knew that Hongbin _was not there_.

When the sun began to rise, painting the sky hues of pink and orange, Wonshik felt his panic begin to truly claw at his insides. His breath was coming shorter now. Hongbin wouldn’t wander off, wouldn’t leave without letting them know. It was bad form for a hunter, and Hongbin knew, even if he couldn’t say it back, he _knew_ how Wonshik felt—

“Wonshik,” said Hakyeon’s voice to his left. There was something eerily dead in his voice. “Wonshik, I’ve found—” 

He fell silent. Wonshik turned and find him standing a few feet away, next to a crumbling set of stairs that led up to the remains of a townhouse. He was staring at something on the ground, too small for Wonshik to see at first. He drew nearer and saw a long piece of wood lying on the ground. It took a moment for it to click.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.” He turned and kicked the stairs.

“Wonshik,” said Hakyeon, still in that dead voice. “That’s his stake.”

“Shut _up_!” Wonshik yelled.

“He wouldn’t just drop his stake—”

“Hakyeon, I swear to god, you’re my best friend, but if you don’t shut your fucking mouth right now, I’ll punch you in it.”

Hakyeon snapped his mouth shut. He didn’t even look moody or pouty at being spoken to like that. He took a few steps forward until he was near the mouth of yet another alley. He bent down and scooped something up in his hands. When he brought it back to show Wonshik, he was trembling. 

Wonshik took the shattered remains of Hongbin’s cell phone from Hakyeon’s hands. It hadn’t just been dropped, it had been stomped on, hard, with enough strength that most of the outer casing was in tiny pieces. A human could have that strength, Wonshik thought to himself desperately. A human could do this. 

“Wonshik,” Hakyeon said. There was emotion in his voice now, a note of alarm. 

Wonshik stumbled forward, feeling so dazed it was like he was drunk. His legs were threatening to give way at any point in time. He felt close to a panic attack, or maybe he was having one; he couldn’t catch his breath, his head was swimming, and it wasn’t until he felt the salt in his mouth that he realised he was crying.

His feet carried him to the alley, but he didn’t want to look, not really, he didn’t want to see Hongbin’s body, didn’t want to see his drained, dried out husk. He put his hand out against the wall to balance himself and his palm scraped along the brick painfully. He became aware that he was muttering _please no_ in a feverish chant under his breath.

There was nothing in the alley.

No body greeted him, no blood was splashed up and down the walls, no signs of a fight or hunt. Nothing. The trail had ended. It had led them here, and now there was nothing. 

He slumped to the ground. “This isn’t happening,” he said numbly. “Wake up, Wonshik, you’ve fallen asleep. Please, god, no, no, this isn’t happening.” 

Hakyeon shook him, saying his name, his voice muffled like Wonshik had suddenly been plunged underwater. He was shivering but his skin felt hot, his lips completely numb and tingling. He gripped Hakyeon’s upper arms, pulling him close. “Hakyeon,” he rasped. “Wake me the fuck up.”

“It’s not a dream, Wonshik,” Hakyeon said. He was crying too, Wonshik noted in a detached sort of way. “He’s — he’s gone.”

“No, he’s not,” Wonshik said. “He’ll have gone home. He dropped his phone and couldn’t contact us so he went home.”

“He left his _weapon_ on the ground,” Hakyeon said desperately. 

“No,” Wonshik said, crying anew. “Hakyeon, please, you can’t — can’t let this happen, please, no, this can’t happen—” 

Hakyeon wrapped around him, and when Wonshik slumped even closer to the ground, Hakyeon came with him, holding him, not saying anything, not trying to fix this with words that could bring no comfort or solution. 

Hakyeon managed to convince him to move eventually, dragging him to his feet and hauling him back the way they came, back towards the car that they’d driven in. It was right where they’d left it, and Hakyeon bundled him into the back seat, fastened his seat belt around him, and then got in the front. 

He drove like a crazy person that night, quite unlike the normal Hakyeon. He wasn’t crying anymore; his face looked hard whenever he glanced back at Wonshik in the rear view mirror. Wonshik avoided his gaze, not liking that Hakyeon _knew_. Not liking the way Hakyeon seemed to be apologising with every look. 

HQ was pretty empty by the time they got back, most people having finished their shift and gone home for the day already. The few people there gave Wonshik decidedly strange looks as he and Hakyeon walked past. He could only imagine what he looked like, face swollen and blotchy from tears, being dragged along by the hand, Hakyeon leading him to god only knew where. No one said anything to him. It was like they _knew_ and were scared that asking would make it real — or that his apparent bad luck would rub off on them.

_What were the protocols_ , he wondered numbly, _for when your boyfriend has been stolen from you_.

Hakyeon yanked him all the way to the office where their desks were located. Hongbin’s was there too, the clothing that he’d been wearing before he’d changed into his club outfit piled up on his chair. Wonshik groaned, suddenly feeling like he was going to pass out. “I can’t— can’t, Hakyeon, I can’t—” 

He stumbled to his desk and sank down into his chair, burying his face in his arms on the surface of the desk. There was another hunter in the room, a man around Wonshik’s age, who cleared his throat nervously. “You’re back late,” he said, apparently addressing Hakyeon. “You— didn’t Hongbin go out with you?”

Wonshik held his breath. “Yeah,” Hakyeon said after a pause. “Yeah, he—” 

Something on his face must have let the guy know, because he said softly, “Oh.”

It was Hakyeon who filed the report that very night, after dragging Wonshik to the med room for a sedative. While Wonshik passed out on a bed in a medically induced sleep for a few hours, Hakyeon filed the paperwork that seemed to be required for the disappearance of a hunter under suspicious circumstances. Wonshik didn’t know what constituted the disappearance of a hunter under _unsuspicious_ circumstances.

Wonshik was grateful, although Hakyeon would always insist that it was just the least he could have done. “It’s not like you could have done it yourself,” he said later, and it was true. Wonshik wouldn’t have been able to. When he woke up, he had managed to convince himself that it had all been a nightmare and it had fallen to Hakyeon to tell him again, to tell him it had actually happened. Another few hours lost to a sedative. 

Perhaps the sedative bled into him more than he thought because when he woke up again he felt — numb. Hakyeon came and sat with him on the bed that he’d been laying on and told him that he’d finished the paperwork, and cracked before he’d even finished the sentence. Wonshik held him as he cried, feeling peculiar and cold, like the inside of him had been transformed into ice. 

Ice couldn’t be hurt. Ice couldn’t cry. 

It was easier than he’d imagined, being ice. Being ice got him through the first day, when he went home to his apartment, still a mess thanks to Hongbin’s visit just before the hunt. He tidied up before he slept, made his apartment his own again, took away the unhomely touch that Hongbin contributed. It seemed like it was waiting for him to come and mess it up again.

Ice didn’t doubt. Ice didn’t think about what could have happened. All ice knew was how to be ice. And all Wonshik knew was that Hongbin couldn’t leave him. He would come back, because he had to. He was a good hunter, and Wonshik loved him, and so he would come back.

It got harder, as the first day became the first night, became the second day, second night, to keep believing that Hongbin would turn up, would just walk through the door like nothing had happened. While it wasn’t a common thing, Wonshik knew of plenty of hunters who simply went missing. It was more likely to find a body; a vampire who was part of a hunt gone wrong was more likely to kill and rip a hunter apart than steal them off to their lairs, wherever they may be. Hunters were, after all, notoriously hard to glamour. But it happened, sometimes, a hunter disappearing without a trace. Those bodies never turned up.

On the third day they were dragged in to see the Dragon. Wonshik had been on ‘administrative leave’ since the sedation, and he was content to sit there in silence in the office while Kris grilled them on what had happened, what they’d done, where they’d last found Hongbin’s things. Wonshik was ice. Hakyeon was not. He answered the questions with as much authority and dignity in his voice as he could, the two of them knowing how many rules and regulations they’d broken by splitting up and going off by themselves. Every so often Hakyeon’s voice would waver, and he fumbled over his words as he talked about the argument they’d had over the vamp escaping, and about finding the smashed cell phone. He looked tired and his eyes seemed permanently red-rimmed. 

“There’s a nest,” Kris said eventually, voice heavy. “Somewhere in the east end. The VCF have been keeping tabs on activity down there.”

Anger flared up in Wonshik, surprising him with the intensity, like it had been waiting underneath the ice for just such an opportunity. “And you didn’t think to tell us?” he demanded, almost yelling. 

Kris regarded him coolly, as if his outburst didn’t affect him at all. “It wasn’t relevant.” 

“Not _relevant_? Most of us hunt over there, you don’t think we couldn’t have done with knowing about a fucking _nest_?”

“I trusted that most of the people working here would have the sense to not wander too far into the east end as a general rule,” Kris retorted.

“Don’t you dare—” Wonshik choked out. “Don’t you _dare_ try to blame this on Hongbin.”

Hakyeon was staring at him. Nobody spoke to Kris like this, and if Wonshik had been a little less angry, and perhaps a little less numb under the anger, he would have been ashamed of himself. Kris merely watched him impassively, and then sighed. “You’re right. It wasn’t his fault. What’s done is done. Wonshik, you can have another week off, you can’t work like this. Hakyeon—” He looked at Hakyeon, who straightened in his chair. “Take a couple of days. With Hongbin gone, we can’t afford to have both of you out of the field for too long.”

_Gone_ , Wonshik thought, _didn’t mean dead_. Then his brain caught up with him. He gaped at Kris. “That’s it?”

He thought he saw a flash of sympathy in Kris’s eyes, but he must have imagined it, because Kris didn’t have emotions. “That’s it.”

Outside he kicked a wall, so loudly that he knew Kris would be able to hear him. Hakyeon looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Are you crazy?” he hissed, grabbing Wonshik’s arm and dragging him away from Kris’s office. “You can’t just talk to him like that, you’ll get put on desk patrol for the rest of your life.”

Wonshik laughed hollowly. “I don’t care.”

“Well, you should care.” Hakyeon looked at him helplessly. “I need you, Wonshik. He’s gone, and I know— well, no, I don’t think I know how you’re feeling, I can only imagine, but please, Wonshik, I need you too.”

Wonshik just shook his head and walked away. Hakyeon was asking him to be his crutch, but Wonshik couldn’t do that, not this time. For the first time in his life, he just didn’t care about how Hakyeon felt. Let him have his emotions, his pain; Wonshik didn’t care. 

He avoided Hakyeon after that, and perhaps Hakyeon sensed it, because he didn’t approach Wonshik, didn’t call or come over to check up on him. There was something odd about it, which broke through even the layer of numbness that lay over all of Wonshik’s actions and feelings. Hakyeon had always come over, even when Wonshik was mad at him. Hakyeon couldn’t leave well enough alone, it was one of his major defining flaws, and something which had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. But this time there was radio silence for a couple of days.

Wonshik spent his administrative leave in HQ anyway. He didn’t like being alone in his apartment and feeling all the walls shrink in on him, the silence pressing against him until he felt like he would break from it. He found himself working out more than before, spending hour after hour training, just to give him something to fill his days with. He slept whenever he got home and woke up at dawn and came back to HQ to fill his time with more tedious things. If anyone thought it was odd to see him there, no one said anything to him.

About a week after Hongbin had gone missing, he stood in his kitchen, waiting patiently for his kettle to finish boiling. He had an old fashioned one which sat on the stove. It was slow, but electrical kettles tended to just break after a few months thanks to the wards around his house, and besides, it was loud, rattling away. At least when he was making tea, there was something filling the silence. He hadn’t been able to stomach listening to music, and that was so out of character that it should have sent alarm bells ringing, but the wrongness of it couldn’t filter through the numbness.

The time dragged on, ticking and ticking. He waited for the tell-tale sound of the whistle telling him that the water was done. There was nothing, for ages, until he began to think something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what made him actually peer into the kettle — it certainly wasn’t curiosity, because he found that the mystery of the silent kettle didn’t actually bother him in the slightest. Perhaps it was just an instinct, to seek out the cause of something odd. Whatever it was, when he peered into the kettle, he found it empty. He’d forgotten to put water into it. 

There was a time lapse, then. He would never quite be able to put together the missing moments, like he’d momentarily blacked out and not realised it. One moment he was standing looking into his empty kettle, the next he was sitting on his kitchen floor, crying. He didn’t think he’d ever cried so hard before, and he couldn’t work out how he’d ended up there. 

He didn’t know how long he cried for. He knew that he cried until he became certain that he was going to throw up, until his face was slimy and wet with tears and snot and he dared not rub at it with his hand. It struck him suddenly how ridiculous it all was, to be sitting here on his kitchen floor, crying. The cupboard door to his left didn’t fit right, he noticed, taking shuddering deep breaths in an attempt at calming down just enough to deter the threat of vomiting. There was dust under the kitchen table that he’d missed last time he was cleaning. How odd to be crying on his kitchen floor. How odd to be crying at all.

He couldn’t seem to stop. 

He hauled himself to his feet, staggering like he was drunk. He lay heavily against the counter and fumbled for some tissues, pressing them to his eyes. He mopped at his face until there was a pile of soiled tissues on the countertop, and he took deep shuddering breaths until he was merely hiccuping pathetically and not crying at all. 

“Stupid,” he muttered, fishing out one more tissue while he swept the others into the trash. “Stupid, stupid. Crying isn’t going to do anything, isn’t going to— change anything.” 

He stumbled into the bathroom and hunched over the sink, staring at himself in his mirror. Everything was misty because he didn’t clean it well enough. Even through the residue on the glass, he could still see quite clearly that he looked a complete mess. His eyes were swollen to the point that he was surprised he could see through them, and were a rather alarming shade of red. His face was blotchy with clear tear tracks running down his cheeks. He’d cried so much that the collar of his t-shirt was damp. 

He splashed his face with water, gasping at the coldness of it, but it seemed to knock whatever had come over him out of him. Crying was a pointless waste of energy. All he’d done was make his eyes hurt and give himself a rather stunning headache. He rummaged around in his medicine cupboard for some Advil and swallowed two pills dry. Then he gagged, but managed to keep them down. 

He had few options, he figured. He could continue to sit here in his apartment, perhaps on the kitchen floor, and feel sorry for himself. He could continue to cry alone and make himself feel even worse and achieve absolutely nothing. Most, if not all, of his options would achieve absolutely nothing, he had to admit. There was nothing to be achieved, nothing to do but wait until Hongbin came back. But if he was going to do nothing but wait, he might as well do it with style.

_Come over_ , he texted Hakyeon, not a question.

The reply came through within thirty seconds. _On my way._

_Bring alcohol_

Hakyeon turned up with a large bottle of expensive whiskey and a six pack of incredibly shit beer. He put them on Wonshik’s counter with a flourish. “I wasn’t sure what you were in the mood for,” he said.

“Well, six wouldn’t be enough in any case,” Wonshik said. He pulled out a couple of whiskey glasses. He couldn’t remember if he had ice.

“That bad, huh,” Hakyeon said. Again, not a question. He didn’t say anything as Wonshik poured two glasses, without ice, handed it to him, and knocked his own back in one go. It burned, all the way down his throat. It felt good. Felt alive, in a way that crying didn’t. 

Hakyeon didn’t say anything about his swollen eyes. Wonshik wished he would, so that he wouldn’t have to say anything. After another whiskey he said, “I was crying.”

“I... yeah,” Hakyeon said. He was usually so eloquent, Wonshik thought, amused. You usually couldn’t get him to shut up. It was usually a bad thing. 

“I started crying on my kitchen floor and then I couldn’t stop. I don’t like crying.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry.”

“Yeah well,” Wonshik muttered, downing his second drink in five minutes. “Like I said, I don’t like crying.” 

He could tell that it was on the tip of Hakyeon’s tongue to tell him to slow down. He wanted to ask why Wonshik had been crying, why now after all these days, and he wanted to say that alcohol wasn’t really going to help matters. Wonshik knew that he was choking all that back, just like he knew that the sun would rise in the morning and set again at night. He knew Hakyeon so well, too well, sometimes. Hakyeon said none of it. Instead, he drank the whiskey in his hands, and silently held out his cup for another one. 

“Have you cried?” Wonshik asked, half an hour later. A third of the bottle of whiskey was gone now. Hakyeon had drunk more of it than Wonshik would have expected, but he still hadn’t spoken. 

“Yeah,” Hakyeon said. “I’ve barely stopped. It’s weird.”

“Crying is weird,” Wonshik agreed sagely.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, I literally wake up crying. I think I have nightmares but I wake up and I can’t think of what they were about. I’ve been pawning off my fieldwork on people because I don’t know if I can do the three hour long sting without crying at least five times. I don’t even want to cry. I’m sad but I’m not _that_ sad, you know?”

Wonshik peered at him. No, he didn’t know. “I feel like my entire world is falling apart,” he said. 

Hakyeon winced. “Oh, Wonshik. I mean, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s okay.” Another mouthful of whiskey. It was starting to burn less. Or maybe he was turning back into ice. “I don’t think we could possibly understand how each other feels, really. I love him. I really, really love him, and I don’t mean this as a criticism but Hakyeon, I don’t think you understand how much I love him.”

“Maybe I don’t,” Hakyeon said quietly. 

There was another stretch of silence. “I don’t know what to do,” Wonshik admitted. “If he doesn’t come back, I mean. There’s this routine that you have, you develop in your life. You get up, shower, go to work — even our work, there’s a routine, going out, casework, paperwork, filing. You train and you talk to people and there are jokes and insider gossip. And then you come home and eat dinner and wash dishes and sleep and— the routine of _life_ is too much, you know? To wake up without him there, to get to work and be unable to see him, to eat dinner alone and wash dishes alone and fall into bed alone. How do you go back to that? How do you go back to nothing after you’ve had — everything?”

“I don’t know,” Hakyeon whispered. 

“I keep thinking about him coming back. I come to work because if I sit in this apartment I’m just waiting for his knock on the door and it doesn’t come. There’s so much I didn’t say to him. I didn’t tell him I loved him enough. I didn’t—” His voice broke.

“I want to tell him sorry,” Hakyeon said. “Sorry that I yelled at him, sorry I got mad at him. I— I don’t want that to be the last thing I ever said to him—” He glanced at Wonshik, but Wonshik stayed quiet. Missing didn’t mean dead, but Hakyeon thought it did, and it was getting harder for Wonshik to deny. 

“He was angry with himself,” Wonshik said. “That would be the worst. I don’t want him— to be angry with himself.”

“And I don’t want you to be angry with yourself over this,” Hakyeon said, leaning in to stare at him in unfocused seriousness. “It wasn’t your fault. He was a good hunter, but sometimes, sometimes these things just happen. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

Wonshik didn’t speak. He didn’t want to talk about Hongbin as if he were dead already. There was no proof of that. 

“I’m scared, Wonshik,” Hakyeon admitted, as the silence threatened to stretch on again between them. Wonshik looked at him, surprised. Hakyeon never admitted to these things. “I am. Hongbin was a good hunter, one of the best. He— we like to think of ourselves as undefeatable, sometimes. I’ve been doing this for so long. It feels like second nature by now. But I’m second guessing every shadow, doubting my every move. Sometimes I feel like I can feel eyes on me, watching me, when I go home after work. It’s just paranoia, pure and simple, but I’m _scared_. I can’t go out on hunts like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Wonshik said.

Hakyeon gave a sob. “It’s not your _fault_.”

“No, I mean. You’ve needed me and I haven’t been there.”

Hakyeon shook his head desperately. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean that I needed to rely on you, or something like that. I don’t need you to be my emotional support. I just mean that I need you to... keep going, I guess. I don’t want to lose you too, Wonshik. You’re my best friend, and I love you, and I—” 

Hakyeon hugged him suddenly. Wonshik groaned. Even melancholy and drunk he still hated it when Hakyeon got sappy like this. “Crushing me to death isn’t going to make anything better,” he muttered into his ear.

“Shut up and embrace me like a man,” Hakyeon said. He was sniffling. Wonshik sighed and wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in Hakyeon’s shoulder. His throat felt tight again. They hugged just long enough that it got slightly awkward and when they pulled away, Hakyeon avoided his eyes. Although that could have been because Wonshik was fairly certain he was crying and didn’t want to let Wonshik see. 

“I need another drink,” Hakyeon muttered. He quickly poured them both another glass of whiskey, filling them both to the brim.

“Good,” Wonshik said. “Let’s deal with our grief like men and drink until we forget all about it.” Hakyeon gave a weak smile and clinked his glass against Wonshik’s. 

——

He woke up the next morning with Hakyeon sprawled across his body in his bed, his mouth full of Hakyeon’s hair. It was hard to tell through the dryness at first; he was more hungover than he could ever remember being in his entire life. His mouth felt like someone had blow dried it and when he shoved Hakyeon off him and sat up, spitting out hairs, his brain seemed to slosh back and forth. 

“Wake me up when the room stops spinning,” Hakyeon mumbled, pressing his face into Wonshik’s pillow. Wonshik grunted at him in response, but he got the feeling that Hakyeon was asleep again already. Wonshik fell rather than slid off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom, convinced with every step that he was about to vomit everywhere. 

He managed to wait until he got to the bathroom.

As he lay on the linoleum of his bathroom afterwards, pressing his face to the cool floor, the inside of his throat burning up, he reflected on every bad decision that had let up to this point. He barely remembered most of the night before, beyond Hakyeon coming over. There was a part of him that was insistent that they’d finished off the entire bottle of whiskey, although he was sure that was wrong because they’d be dead (a later inspection showed that they’d drunk _most_ of the bottle, which was an important distinction). Part of him was definitely questioning why he’d decided to counteract crying with alcohol. All it meant was that he was lying on his _bathroom_ floor this time struggling to hold back tears. 

He was still mostly drunk, he knew that much. And maybe it was just the alcohol talking, but he felt better than he had done, emotionally, if not physically. He didn’t think he was okay, but he was _better_. It was the difference, he thought, counting his ceiling tiles as he waited for another bout of nausea to pass, between waking up and taking twenty minutes to drag yourself out of bed, and waking up and taking only ten. Those people who woke up and got up immediately afterwards would never understand, and those who stayed in bed for reasons other than simply being unable to motivate yourself to move could only understand a little. They could never _understand_. But the difference was there, and it mattered.

He fell asleep on his bathroom floor and woke up three hours later marginally less sick, marginally more stiff and sore, and, most importantly, marginally more capable of getting on with things.


	2. Chapter 2

This time when he made tea, he managed to fill the kettle with water.

As he set it carefully on the stove, a small smile played on his mouth. It was weird to feel it there, but it was there nonetheless. He’d lost the entire previous day and night to the hangover from hell, and it was nice to feel normal again, to be able to move without everything inside of him protesting furiously. He didn’t even want to think about how Hakyeon had managed to drag himself into work the previous night, and again tonight. The man was a glutton for punishment, if you asked Wonshik.

He busied himself as he waited for the water to boil, pulling a mug out of the cupboard, opening a tea bag, readying the milk. His cutlery had a habit of not being where it was supposed to be and so it took him a minute or two of rummaging around before he managed to find one that hadn’t slipped down the back of the drawer. He retrieved it with a triumphant flourish. 

There was, suddenly, a prickle on the wards against the house, one of them suddenly crying out. Wonshik swung his head, dropping the spoon back into the drawer, immediately squaring his shoulders in defence, hand dropping to his belt to the stake there. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he waited, waited for the next ward to scream, waited for _something_. There was silence for so long that he thought it had been a false alarm.

Then there was a bang, so loud that he felt himself jump about a foot in the air. A bang of something heavy hitting Wonshik’s front door. It had rattled in the frame.

“What the fuck,” he muttered. He kept his hands on his stake but the wards were quiet now, though they didn’t seem calm. He sidled up to the door, feeling the wards for anything, any sort of sign of what had just been thrown against his door. There wasn’t another bang but he could hear something now, something muffled by the magic Wonshik had put on his apartment to soundproof both the inside and out. 

Tentatively, he eased open the front door, just a crack. The spell parted and the screams hit him square in the face, high pitched and full of pain and fear. They were so loud that he flinched. There was a body on the floor by his feet, turned away from him, and it was the body that was screaming. It was a constant grating sound, so loud that if it had been caused by anyone human, their voice would be starting to give way. But what was lying at his feet wasn’t human, that much Wonshik knew. His wards were screaming angrily at him, and he knew that the sensible thing would be to go back inside and call for back up. But the body was bound in chains, silver chains, so tightly that although it was trying to struggle, it couldn’t do much more than flop in place like a fish dragged out of the ocean. 

What the fuck was a vampire doing on his front step, Wonshik wondered. He took a tentative step out of his apartment. It was the only one around, or the only one that he could sense. He drew his stake, holding it in a hand gone sweaty. What sort of person just delivered a vampire to someone’s home? Why leave it here? Why not take it to VCF headquarters?

Who the fuck knew where he lived? 

He turned the vamp over with his foot, pressing on the chains, not being particularly careful or gentle with it. It was still screaming, and Wonshik didn’t think about why no one was coming out to see what was causing the noise, like he had done. Normal people learned very quickly to ignore screams and turn away from cries for help. There was nothing they could do, and no one was willing to risk their own life for someone who would probably be a stranger. 

The light spilling from his doorway fell on the face of the vampire. Wonshik took a step backwards — back into the safety of his house — and then the stake fell from his hand and clattered to the ground. “Hongbin,” he whispered.

The next second he was on his knees, desperately tugging at the chains wrapped all around Hongbin’s body, trying to free him. “It’s okay,” he heard himself saying, his voice sounding like it was coming from someone else. “It’s okay, Hongbin, you’re— safe, I’ve got you—”

It was like, for a few seconds, he forgot what he was looking at. His brain was struggling to put the two things together, unable to connect them. Hongbin was alive. He was here, he was laying by Wonshik’s feet, he was — screaming, in pain, because — and then his brain skipped, like a needle juddering over a record, because it was a vampire that was laying by his feet. Not Hongbin. Vampire.

Hongbin. Vampire.

He pulled his hand away from Hongbin’s mouth a moment before Hongbin’s teeth would have fastened around his hand. He flinched at the sight of the fangs run out and accidentally lay his hand on Hongbin’s shoulder. His wards went off, the flame wheel on his back sending energy through him in a jerky fashion as if it were nervous. Hongbin howled in pain, head tipping back as he tried to arch but couldn’t because of the chains around him.

Wonshik hurriedly drew his hand back. “Fuck,” he said. It seemed to be the only thing he could say. He stood and stared at Hongbin for a minute or so. Hongbin screamed the entire time. His eyes were fixated on Wonshik, tracking his every movement, and whenever Wonshik looked at his face, Hongbin snarled, fangs bared. 

Wonshik sat down heavily on the ground, in his doorway, still staring at Hongbin, blankly this time, unable to take anything in. He didn’t know what he was thinking. He rather thought that he didn’t think about anything, his mind a perfect blank, but he must have come to some sort of decision, because eventually he pulled out his phone and called Hakyeon.

Hakyeon sounded harried when he answered. He had gone into HQ to finish off some paperwork and he hated that. “Yeah?” he asked. “Are you— who the fuck is screaming?” Hakyeon’s voice sharpened. “Do you need me to come help—”

“Hongbin,” Wonshik said. That was when he started crying. 

There was a pause. “What?” Hakyeon asked hesitantly. 

“It’s Hongbin. Hongbin’s screaming.”

“He’s _alive_?” There was sounds of movement on the other end of the line. “Oh my god, Wonshik, where are you? I’ll come and pick you up, why is he screaming, is he hurt—”

“He’s not—” Wonshik choked. He was struggling to breathe now. His mouth felt full of ashes, swallowing near to impossible, his throat felt so thick. “He’s not alive, Hakyeon.”

“But you just said he’s the one screaming.”

“Whoever— whoever took him, they turned him.” Hakyeon made a noise of horror. “He’s, he’s lying at my feet, Hakyeon, and he’s a _vampire_. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do this.” He closed his eyes and lay his head on his knees. “I can’t— what the fuck am I supposed to do, Hakyeon?”

“I—” There was silence from Hakyeon’s end of the line, for a long few seconds. On Wonshik’s end, there was the wet, hiccuping sound of his tears, and Hongbin screaming still. Wonshik couldn’t tell anymore if he was in pain or if he was angry, but the sound of it was tearing his heart apart. He wanted to go to him, wanted to hold him and promise that everything would be okay, like he had all those times before when Hongbin was upset over something, even the things that Wonshik didn’t think mattered. But he couldn’t. Instinctual fear kept him rooted to the ground, far enough away that there could be no risk, in the doorway of his apartment. So that he could scoot back, be safe. He hated it.

He would never hold Hongbin again.

“ _Hakyeon_ ,” he said, voice thick with desperation.

“Okay,” Hakyeon said. Wonshik could _hear_ it, hear the steel that Hakyeon had taken the time to bolt himself together with. He’d used his silence and put on his armour, the way that he had after Hongbin had first gone missing. Wonshik felt a stab of guilt in his stomach, at having to rely on him again like this, on having called _him_ instead of someone who could actually help. But Wonshik needed him more than he’d ever needed Hakyeon before in his life. He needed Hakyeon to make decisions for him.

“Okay,” Hakyeon repeated. “I’m going to come over. I’m going to— I’ll try to get hold of the Dragon, okay, because he’ll know what to do, there’s got to be some sort of protocol for all of this.”

“They’ll kill him,” Wonshik said dully. 

“You— no, they won’t. They won’t, Wonshik. I’m not going to let them.”

Wonshik laughed, then covered his face with his free hand in a futile attempt at stopping the fresh bout of tears. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “he’s already dead.” His voice broke on the last word. 

He could tell, from the expression on Hakyeon’s face when he first laid eyes on Hongbin, that some part of him hadn’t quite believed Wonshik. Perhaps he’d thought that the screaming was some trick, and that Wonshik was finally cracking up. Wonshik felt like he was cracking up. His seams were unravelling, slowly, patiently, and it would be a comfort when they actually went.

Hakyeon wet his bottom lip, eyes fixated on Hongbin. “I’ve got— guys,” he said, without dragging his gaze away. He seemed like he couldn’t stop looking. “Downstairs. They brought a van. We’re going to take him to HQ.”

Part of Wonshik was grateful for the clinical tone in his voice; part of him wanted to reach out and strangle Hakyeon against the wall and demand to know why he didn’t _care_. But Wonshik knew that Hakyeon cared. He was being the strong one. 

When Wonshik didn’t reply, Hakyeon turned to stare at him. “This is really fucked up,” he blurted out.

All Wonshik could offer was, “Yeah.”

They put Hongbin in the back of the van, chains and all. It had been warded against sound, and when the doors shut on him the silence that fell over them all seemed oppressive. Wonshik didn’t offer a word to disturb it, merely climbing into the front of the van and scrambling into the second row of seats, curling up on himself and avoiding Hakyeon’s eyes when he climbed in after him and took the seat beside him. 

He hadn’t wanted this, he reflected dully as they made their way to HQ, stopping at traffic lights and stop signs like life was going on as normal. He had wanted Hongbin alive, beyond anything, wanted him back safe and unharmed, the whole thing destined to become nothing more than something which gave them both nightmares every once in a while. He’d planned what he would say when Hongbin came back, all the words that he’d never managed to say, all the different places on Hongbin’s body that he’d kiss _I love you_ into, until Hongbin couldn’t deny it, could never forget the extent to which Wonshik fucking adored him. 

But if he couldn’t have Hongbin back alive, then he’d wanted— _something_. A body. A body that he could hold and touch and grieve over. Something which would close the aching gap inside him, give him a chance of closure. There could be no getting over Hongbin but at least he could have begun to move on.

What he had been given was just another limbo, another in between space. Hongbin was not alive, but neither was he dead. He had been returned to Wonshik — and that was something he didn’t want to think about, didn’t want to think about how whoever had done this had known enough to literally leave Hongbin on his doorstep — but he hadn’t been _returned_. This wasn’t the Hongbin he knew, and yet it was, it was painfully so. And maybe he’d started to come to terms with having had his last kiss from Hongbin, his last embrace, but it was one thing for it to be because Hongbin was _gone_ and another to be able to see him there and know, beyond any doubt, that he could not touch him. 

At HQ, Hakyeon bundled him silently through the hallways with Hongbin’s screams ringing in their ears as the ‘guys’ brought him into the building. “Where are they taking him?” Wonshik asked, lips numb. A weak sort of horror spread over him at the thought that they were taking him off to kill him.

Hakyeon must have read the expression on his face because he shook his head in a sharp, tight gesture. “The cells. We’re going to keep him there until we decide what to do with him.”

Wonshik bit his lip so hard that the copper taste of blood washed over his tongue. He gagged, thinking about the way Hongbin had screamed, thought about Hongbin laughing and throwing his shampoo against his bathroom door, thought about— the vampire he’d killed a few weeks back but now it had Hongbin’s face, thought about the vampire he’d disturbed feeding only now it was Hongbin’s mouth smeared with the blood of his innocent victim, fangs glinting dangerous in the moonlight. 

He thought about the way Hongbin had howled when Wonshik’s wards had _hurt_ him. 

They were in some office after that but Wonshik didn’t pay attention, lost in his thoughts. He was crying again but the knowledge felt like it belonged to someone else and he was content to let Hakyeon push him down into a chair while the tears rolled down his face. He felt perfectly detached to the bustle going on around him. 

“He’s hysterical,” said someone in an undertone.

“Am not,” Wonshik mumbled, eyes half closed.

A hand pressed against his forehead coolly. “Wonshik,” said Hakyeon’s voice insistently. “Wonshik, look at me.” Wonshik opened his eyes and stared at Hakyeon. His eyes were full of a painful concern that made Wonshik want to throw up. He tore his gaze away and started staring at the arm of the chair, picking at a stray thread.

“We put the silver cuffs on,” said a new voice. “He screamed like a banshee but—” The noise cut off as Hakyeon hissed something. “Right, sorry,” said the voice again, sounding somewhat sheepish.

“Here.” Something was held up to his mouth, pressed against his lips. “Wonshik, take this please.” 

Wonshik opened his mouth at Hakyeon’s request and took the pill onto his tongue, took an obedient sip of the water that was held up to his mouth a split second later. “Will this kill me?” he asked.

“No, it’s just a sedative,” Hakyeon said, alarmed. “To help you stop crying.”

“That’s a shame,” Wonshik mumbled. “I would like to die right now.”

A sudden crash drew him slightly out of his stupor. He looked around somewhat startled to find that it was just that Hakyeon had dropped the glass of water on the floor, where it had shattered into pieces and got water everywhere. “Don’t say that,” Hakyeon whispered. “Don’t ever say that.”

Unable to take the words back because he didn’t want to lie, Wonshik looked around himself, taking in his surroundings for the first time. They were in the Dragon’s office, though Kris himself was missing. Apart from Wonshik and Hakyeon, there was a tall hunter who had been here longer than even Hakyeon, and a new trainee who was shuffling his feet nervously. 

“You got water on the Dragon’s carpet,” Wonshik said. Hakyeon didn’t deign him with a reply, standing and leaving the room, coming back a few minutes later with a brush and pan for cleaning up the glass. He worked in silence. Neither of the other two people in the room spoke either. The shuffly feet one kept clearing his throat like he was going to say something and then seemed to think better of it. 

In the silence, all Wonshik could hear was Hongbin’s screams.

The distraction that the arrival of Kris brought was something that even Wonshik could appreciate. The tension in the room was so thick that no one seemed to dare cough. Kris swept into his office, dismissed the two other hunters, and poured everyone left in the room a double whiskey that he retrieved from a drawer in his desk. “You keep whiskey in your desk,” Wonshik mumbled.

“It does wonders for shock,” Kris said grimly. He motioned for them to drink up and Wonshik knocked it back in one. The burn of it reminded him of drinking just a few days earlier with Hakyeon and that made fresh tears spring to his eyes. 

Hakyeon nursed his drink, sipping at it slowly. “What are we going to do?” he asked bluntly. 

Kris sighed. “I’m not sure. This has never happened before. Vamps don’t turn hunters.”

“Vamps in nests don’t act like normal vamps,” Hakyeon pointed out, then tacked on, “sir.”

“You’re right.” Kris slumped into his desk chair, making a bridge with his fingers and resting his chin on top. He looked exhausted, the shadows under his eyes aging him substantially. Wonshik suddenly realised that he had no idea how old Kris even was. He was just always there, a constant, the Dragon in his office. 

“Are you going to kill him?” Wonshik asked, setting his glass down on Kris’s desk. 

The answer came quickly and sharply. “No. At least, not yet. We should determine whether he has any information on the nest before we do anything else.”

“You’re going to torture him,” Wonshik said flatly.

“No.” Kris’s voice was firm, and Wonshik wanted so badly to believe him. Part of him was still smarting about being kept in the dark about the nest in the first place. “We’ll just talk to him. He was one of us. They don’t lose their personalities when they get turned.”

Wonshik pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he was seeing white spots on the inside of his eyelids, until it was painful. “This is so fucked up,” he said, echoing Hakyeon’s earlier sentiments. 

“Indeed,” said Kris. His words sounded dry, but his tone was anything but. “Of course, this brings us to what we’re going to do with him after we talk to him. After that we’re still left with a vampire on our hands. We can’t release him, of course. Killing him is both the quickest, safest, and most humane course of action—”

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ —” Wonshik began, bristling, rising out of his seat, only to be yanked back down by Hakyeon.

“But,” Kris continued, giving him a quelling glare, “like I said, he was one of us. He was a hunter, just like you and me. We don’t take out our own, not— not without good reason.” He stood up abruptly and began fiddling with some papers on his desk, suddenly looking highly uncomfortable. “Hongin has no next of kin, as is usually the case.”

Wonshik nodded. Most, if not all, of the hunters who worked here had no family around to worry about them or to grieve for them when they died or went missing. It was easier that way, and since most hunters made their entire lives about their jobs, it was more sensible that way. It wasn’t the case that they were all orphans; Wonshik wasn’t, and in Hongbin’s case, Wonshik understood that at least one of his parents was still living, although Hongbin hadn’t spoken to said parent in close to five years. 

“There’s no one around to make these decisions for us, no family member who can pull the plug, so to speak. Like I’ve said, this has never happened before—”

“Why do you think they did it?” Hakyeon asked impulsively. 

Kris frowned at him. “I have no idea. Perhaps he came too close to their territory. Perhaps it’s revenge for trying to go after them. Who knows the way the minds of vampires work?”

“They know where I live,” Wonshik mumbled. The room went still. “I don’t want to move.” There were too many memories in that apartment, memories that he wanted to cling to too badly.

“That’s your decision to make.” Something in his voice made it quite clear that Kris thought he’d lost his mind. “As I was saying, though, he doesn’t have any next of kin. As I understand it, you and Hongbin were, ah, in a relationship, of some sort?” 

Both Wonshik and Hakyeon nodded. “Of a sort,” Wonshik said bitterly. _I’m in fucking love with him, you cold hearted son of a bitch_.

“You’re the one who knew him best, you’re the one with the...invested feelings. To all extents and purposes, you’re his only family. As such, we’re leaving the decision as to what we do with him in your hands.”

“What?” Wonshik whispered.

“We can either kill him, or we can keep him here in the cells. They’re secure, he’ll be secure. There are really no other options.”

There was a long silence, so silent that Wonshik felt like he could hear the _tick-tock_ of the watch on Kris’s wrist. Eventually he said, in a choked voice, “That’s not a decision you can ask me to make.”

“You’re the only one I can ask to make it,” Kris said gently. “There’s literally no one else and making decisions about Hongbin without consulting his friends or— or his family, of sorts, is— it’s barbaric. The recommendation from the VCF would be to kill him, but the VCF is not us. And Hongbin is one of us. I don’t presume to tell you what to do. But you have to make the decision.”

A thousand thought swirled in Wonshik’s head, most of them angry at having this decision laid at his feet. He didn’t know if this was what he wanted, in the end. He didn’t want to have to think. He was so tired, down to his bone marrow. He wanted to sleep and maybe when he woke it would all be over, some horrible nightmare. He didn’t dare pinch himself in case it hurt; but then everything inside him hurt, so maybe that was a sign in itself. 

He wasn’t going to be given time to think, that much was obvious. Kris was looking at him expectantly, and Hakyeon seemed to have switched off, staring at his glass of whiskey with dull, shuttered eyes. The decision, Wonshik found, came so easily that it wasn’t even a decision so much as a fact. He could not let them kill Hongbin, couldn’t stand aside and let them do that. Hongbin had been taken from him, but he’d been returned, and that meant something. Perhaps something— a cure— _something_ could be done, in the future. Hongbin was still _here_ and Wonshik would hold onto that as long as he possibly could. 

“I want you to lock him up,” he said, voice rasping. “Just, don’t kill him, I don’t want you to do that.”

Kris’s shoulders slumped a little. He seemed like he’d been expecting that answer, but he didn’t look disappointed. “Okay,” he said. He stood up, shaking himself to rid himself of his exhaustion. Wonshik wished he could do that. “I’ll make those arrangements. We’ll have to get— food for him. That’s not going to be easy.”

“Bagged blood?” Wonshik asked, voice sharp, although he didn’t really expect Kris to allow Hongbin to go eating random humans. Kris nodded. “Can you do it?”

“I have contacts, let’s leave it at that.”

 _Of course you do_ , Wonshik thought. There was a wave of numbness threatening to wash over him and he let it, revelling in it. It swept all the pain away, left the inside of him cold again. He’d made the decision. He would learn to live with that decision. He would be ice until he could learn to live with it, but he would certainly learn. 

——

The interrogation took place the next day. Nobody was calling it an interrogation but no one could deny that was what it was, truly. Kris’s contacts had come through, and Hongbin had feasted on a number of blood bags donated — or stolen, Wonshik suspected — from a local blood bank. They’d waited until the very dead of night, when most of the other hunters had left, for the interrogation. It seemed safer that way.

The cells were on the lower levels of HQ and down here it was freezing. Wonshik shuffled, rubbing at his arms to get rid of the goosebumps which had sprung up and which only had a little to do with the temperature. Hakyeon was by his side, even though he didn’t have to be, shivering lightly. 

Hongbin was in the only locked cell. The door was thick, heavy metal, difficult for humans to open, although not, he suspected, difficult for a vampire. That was why the inside of the doors had been warded, to prevent anything locked inside from coming near them. Because of this they were able to keep to a pretty bare bones locking system; the doors were held shut by clasps, each one probably just a bit smaller than Wonshik’s head. It was pretty low tech, considering the rest of the set up at HQ, but perhaps that was the point. It didn’t take technology to fight against vamps. Humans had been managing that for centuries. 

Wonshik hadn’t expected Kris to come to this but there he was, standing a little back from the door to Hongbin’s cell. He was leaving the actual interrogation to a seasoned field hunter, a man just edging into thirty, tall and grizzled. His name was Kangin, if Wonshik’s memory held out. There was a nasty scar running down one of his cheeks that rumor said he’d gotten when a vamp managed to steal his weapon from him. Wonshik rather felt that if that were true, the man wouldn’t still be alive, and suspected the scar was the result of some sort of bar fight. The guy seemed the type. 

Hongbin was shuffling in his cell, sounding like he was pacing. He always did that when he was nervous. Wonshik could see him, still, pacing up and down the sidewalk, that last night he’d seen Hongbin _alive_ —

There were two slots in the cell door, only openable from the outside. The bottom one was for throwing the bagged blood in. The top one was set at face level, and it was this one that the hunter veteran opened. There was suddenly the smell of blood, tangy in the air. Apparently Hongbin hadn’t exactly conserved his supply of bagged blood. 

“Hongbin,” Kangin said. Hearing Hongbin’s name from his mouth seemed weird, although Wonshik wasn’t about to get into thoughts of being possessive over a _name_. There was something in the tone, though, something which seemed to speak volumes to the fact that to this man, Hongbin was simply a vamp. He’d never known the human Hongbin. “We want to talk to you—”

There was a bang, loud enough to make Wonshik jump. Hakyeon yelped beside him. Even Kris looked a little unsettled, and Kangin took a step backwards, looking downright disconcerted. Where Wonshik stood, he couldn’t see — and he’d chosen this position for that exact reason — but it seemed like Hongbin had thrown himself at the door. The wards repelled him almost immediately but when he screamed in pain and outrage, it was like he was out there in the hall with them.

“Let me _feed_ ,” he shrieked. There was something strange about his voice now. He still sounded like Hongbin but there was a quality to it that made the hair on the back of Wonshik’s neck stand on end. It sounded like Hongbin but it wasn’t him at the same time. He didn’t like it one bit.

“Hongbin, listen to me,” said Kangin. “We need to ask you some questions, so we can go and find the vamps who did this to you.”

“I’m so thirsty,” Hongbin cried plaintively, scratching at something in the cell, something which sounded metallic. “Let me feed, please, just one— just _one_ , let me drink—”

“We can’t do that,” said Kangin. He sounded almost genuinely sorry; he was a good actor. It didn’t seem to make much difference. Hongbin just screamed at his answer and started banging around his cell. Wonshik remembered that the cells had a basic set of furniture in them, incongruous when it came to the cells’ purpose, but then they were humans and they were apt to think too much about these things. From the sounds of it, Hongbin was in the process of smashing most of it up. 

“Hongbin, are you listening to me?” Kangin asked. His reply was the sound of another bang as Hongbin threw himself once more at the door. “Don’t do that, Hongbin, we’re trying to help here.”

“ _Feed me_!” Hongbin screamed.

“This is pointless,” Kris said heavily. “He’s not going to talk to us. Kangin, close the slot. We’ll get him some more blood later but I think he’s too far gone already.”

Kangin slammed the slot shut, looking happy about it. Hakyeon turned his face to the side and when Wonshik looked at him, he realised he was crying, silent tears streaming down his face. Wonshik wrapped an arm around him, pulling him close. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, as much for Hakyeon’s benefit as his own. “He’s in there somewhere.”

Kris turned to Wonshik, looking defeated. “The bloodlust has taken hold of him already. I’d thought— hoped, that talking to him sooner would stop him from getting to that stage, but I guess I was wrong.”

“What do we do next?” Wonshik asked, surprisingly steady. 

Kris gave him a weary look. “Nothing, Wonshik. There’s nothing more we can do. We keep him here, like you wanted us to, and we feed him what we can. After that, only time will tell.”

——

Wonshik let himself down onto the wards, hunching into his jacket for the extra warmth that it could benefit him. There was no one down here, which was to be expected. Wonshik was glad for the isolation, for the escape from the sympathetic glances of his fellow hunters. They all knew by now, of course, although no one came to speak to him about it. Hongbin was now a spectre, a lone vampire rattling in the cells in the lower basement. A warning, now, against taking stupid risks.

That stung Wonshik, more than he’d thought it would. People seemed to be attributing what had happened to Hongin to a mistake that Hongbin had made, like he’d taken his eye off the ball for a second and been turned because of it. That wasn’t right. It hadn’t been Hongbin’s fault, that much Wonshik knew. No, it had all been very meticulous. A rookie mistake would have gotten Hongbin killed; a rookie mistake didn’t end up deposited on Wonshik’s doorstep, wrapped up in chains like a Christmas gift. 

He reached the door of Hongbin’s cell, and lay his hand on it. Hongbin had gone still inside, apparently sensing him. “Hongbin,” Wonshik murmured. “It’s me.” 

Wonshik heard the shuffle as Hongbin moved in his cell, and then— 

“Let me out!” Hongbin screamed. There was a banging, as he thrashed around his cell, the banging echoing in the hallway Wonshik stood in. “Let me feed! I’m so thirsty, let me feed, let me _feed_!”

Wonshik sunk down against the wall, back scraping against the bricks. He buried his head into his hands, scrubbing at his eyes. It had been a couple of weeks since Hongbin had been left on his doorstep, and he felt like he hadn’t slept at all since then, which to a certain extent was true. He’d been drowning himself in work, research, in training, in wearing himself out until he was too exhausted to stay awake any longer, until he could close his eyes and sleep for a fitful hour or two until he woke and his mind began whirring again. He could tell that Hakyeon was worried about him. He’d seen the side glances Hakyeon had slid him recently, had noticed all the times that Hakyeon had opened his mouth to say something and then slammed it shut, as if afraid that he would say too much or perhaps too little. 

Wonshik was grateful that he hadn’t, as of yet, attempted to speak. He didn’t want to talk. There was nothing talk could do anymore. 

“Feed!” Hongbin shrieked. “Blood! Let me _out_!” He began to scream in pure outrage over being locked up, Wonshik barely able to make out anything other than demands to be fed, angry shrieks over how thirsty he was. Wonshik lay his head back against the wall, letting the incoherent babbling wash over him, filling his head and chasing out any other thoughts. It unnerved him how it was almost relaxing. 

Then the laughter started. 

It jolted Wonshik out of his semi-doze, so suddenly that he surged up to his feet before he was really aware of moving. For a few seconds he thought it was crying, became convinced that what was behind that door was Hongbin, human and alive again, and he was _crying_ , in pain, and he rushed forward, hands going to the first clasp, ready to heave it open, before he realised, no. No, it wasn’t crying. Hongbin was laughing, maniacally, so loudly that Wonshik’s head was ringing before long. He backed away and slumped back down on the wall, hands clamped over his ears to try to drown it out. But it just went on and on. 

Wonshik flopped over onto the ground, staring at the ceiling. It was harder to let the laughter wash over him. The pit of his stomach felt like a stone, a hard knot that tightened painfully with every sound out of Hongbin’s mouth. He blinked rapidly to clear the sudden tears in his eyes but it was too late. They slipped down his face and he made no move to wipe them away. Lifting his arm seemed like too much effort.

At least the babble was Hongbin’s voice. This laughter wasn’t Hongbin at all. 

Eventually it quietened down. The laughter trailed off and everything went silent for a bit. He was still now. Still was good. Still meant that Hongbin wasn’t hurting himself. The tears dried slowly on Wonshik’s face. He didn’t know how long he lay there on the hard floor, the cold seeping into his back, but when he eventually sat up, he was stiff. His spine clicked in five different places as he got to his feet. The silence was beginning to worry him now. He didn’t think he’d heard Hongbin silent for this long since the infection.

He lay a hand on the door again. “Hongbin?” he asked tentatively. “Are you—”

There was a bang, louder than anything Wonshik had heard before. “Feed me!” Hongbin screamed, throwing himself against the door to his cell again, the bang echoing around the hallway. Wonshik stumbled backwards, shocked even though he knew that the door could hold against any vampire. “I’m so thirsty, I want human blood!” 

A rhythmic banging started up, Hongbin’s fists pounding off the door. He began shrieking, mixed in with crazed laughter, lost in his desperation to get at Wonshik on the other side of the door. Wonshik staggered to the stairs, dragging himself up them and out of earshot from Hongbin’s screams to be let out. 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to ignore them.


End file.
